Equine Medication Focus of Senate Hearing

The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation has scheduled a hearing next week on “Medication and Performance Enhancing Drugs in Horse Racing.”

According to a release from the committee, the July 12 hearing will “examine the prevalence and use of medications and performance enhancing drugs in horse racing.”

The 2:30 p.m. hearing in Room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, D. C., will be streamed at the Senate Commerce Committee’s website.

The schedule of witnesses for the hearing, the second by a Congressional committee this year, has not been released.

On April 30, the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Health conducted a 2 ½-hour hearing in Kennett Square, Pa. Although the topic for the hearing was problems within horse racing, most of the witnesses and testimony focused on medication and drugs within the sport.

One of the witnesses at that hearing, U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield of Kentucky, is sponsor of the Interstate Horseracing Improvement Act, which would amend the Interstate Horseracing Act of 1978 to ban performance-enhancing drugs on race day and would provide for stiff penalties for violators.